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Land management agencies, the timber industry and help from supportive politicians continue to perpetuate policies and practices of old when it comes to resolving the forest management problems of today. This blind acceptance of perpetuating forest industry mentality hinders the instilling of a new paradigm. It’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It’s more than unfortunate; it’s detrimental to our planet. Helena Dore’s piece in proclaiming the talking points of the Custer Gallatin National Forest in its management of the Bozeman Municipal Watershed (BMW) project doesn’t help.

Science is uncovering new details in how our formative understanding of a forest ecosystem really works. Perhaps during that process, we should predispose our forests are here for another reason, designed to keep our planet in harmony with itself? To keep the atmospheric gases in balance so life could exist?

As stated in Helena Dore’s piece of Aug. 14, the BMW project calls for logging and burning to remove both small-diameter and large-diameter trees. This is the worst policy and practice the Forest Service could undertake on our public lands. Such treatments remove the forest's biodiversity, genetic diversity and its ability to sequester carbon in a most proficient and efficient manner. This idea that our little forest won’t make a difference in the global fight on climate change is a cop-out. All one has to do is to Google “what is the value of a tree” and then think of the cumulative effects of that tree plus others over time.

Helena’s article should have highlighted some science in retrospect, with how logging impacts wildlife, giving a voice to why chainsaw mentality is not our only choice. We have to hear other voices than the Custer Gallatin National Forest. Our forests are here for more than one reason.

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